Collection The White House Social Secretary
For more than one hundred years, White House Social Secretaries have demonstrated a profound knowledge of protocol and society in...
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"Every day is wash-day at the White House,” housekeeper Elizabeth Jaffray recalled. The three maids assigned to the laundry when Jaffray first arrived in 1909 did not use electrical appliances; the immense amount of daily washing was done manually, then pressed with flat-irons. At least once a day, while the laundrywomen were at their tasks downstairs, a houseman ran a large carpet sweeper over the floor coverings throughout the house. A thorough vacuuming occurred each Saturday morning.
Every weekday morning at 8:30, Jaffray, who resided in the White House, consulted with the first lady about meals, personnel, and general management issues. At nine, the cook brought menus to Jaffray’s office for review. By ten o’clock, Jaffray was on her way to the market stalls to make bulk purchases of fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, game, and butter.
The head cook and two or three assistants prepared almost all the food, not only for the president’s table, but also for receptions, state dinners, and for the servants.
Throughout the rest of the 20th century, interviews with the White House staff, diaries, memoirs, and photographs, offer capsules of the daily schedules and responsibilities that have kept the White House running. From the daily tasks of cleaning to preparing for special events such as State Dinners, the staff plays a crucial role in keeping the Executive Mansion running.
For more than one hundred years, White House Social Secretaries have demonstrated a profound knowledge of protocol and society in...
For more than two centuries, the White House has been the home of American presidents. A powerful symbol of the...
The whole family [of President Theodore Roosevelt] were fiends when it came to reading. No newspapers. Never a moment was...
For most of the 19th century, the structure of the White House staff remained generally the same. At the top...
A group of physicians and surgeons meeting in Washington 1891 was treated to a reception at the White House on the...
Animals -- whether pampered household pets, working livestock, birds, squirrels, or strays -- have long been a major part of...
President Andrew Jackson was a slaveholder who brought a large household of slave domestics with him from Tennessee to the...
John Quincy Adams hired Antoine Michel Giusta as his valet after they met in Belgium in 1814. Giusta was a deserter...
Prior to the 1939 visit of the queen and king of England, Eleanor Roosevelt received a State Department memorandum, listing various...
"Largely through television," notes historian William Seale, the White House "is the best known house in the world, the instantly...
White House staff who lived at the President’s House during the nineteenth century, including enslaved and free African Americans, us...
Thomas F. Pendel was a White House doorman from the Abraham Lincoln administration to the turn of the 20th century....